The use of wireless technology by the telecommunication industry has increased dramatically as the capacity and reliability of wireless communication systems has improved. Once considered only to be a convenient method for sending voiced communications, digital wireless communications systems are now a necessity for providing transmission of all forms of communications including plain old telephony service (POTS), integrated services digital network (ISDN), variable bit rate (VBR) data service, wideband service, leased line service and packet data services. Although it has been technically feasible to transmit all of these types of services, the large amount of bandwidth required for high data rate communications has made many of these services uneconomical. As the number of subscribers requiring access to wireless digital communication systems has increased, the reliance on a wide bandwidth for each communication is no longer realistic.
The finite bandwidth allocated to wireless communications systems for public use has become increasingly valuable. Since it is unlikely that additional bandwidth to support user growth will be allocated for existing applications, many of the recent advances in telecommunication hardware and software have been directed toward increasing the transmission rate of data while utilizing a decreased amount of bandwidth.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a wireless digital communication system which supports the same high data rate services as conventional wired networks while utilizing the allocated bandwidth more efficiently.